The minority group most oppressed in the world today for the color of their skin, eyes, and hair is likely albinos. From National Geographic:
Since 2000, a string of murders has left 72 Tanzanian albinos dead. The killings are believed to have been motivated by a lucrative trade in albino body parts, which some Africans believe possess magical powers.
Last month, a United Nations report on albino persecution put Tanzania at the top of a list of African nations—mostly in East Africa—where albinos are targeted for murder. ...
"When I was growing up there was a stigma," says Ziada Ally Nsembo, an albino who helps lead a group called the Tanzania Albino Society. "But people weren't getting their bones cut—that only starting happening a few years ago."
Yet, the plight of albinos doesn't elicit much media attention, at least not compared to more pressing issues such as World War T.
Moreover, albinos are barely recognized as a victimized minority group.
Moreover, albinos are barely recognized as a victimized minority group.
Why not?
In the 21st Century, one of the more important processes to study is who gets to be a recognized victim group, One way to examine it is to pay attention to who makes the cut and who gets ignored.
In the 21st Century, one of the more important processes to study is who gets to be a recognized victim group, One way to examine it is to pay attention to who makes the cut and who gets ignored.
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33 comments:
Why do people not care much? Because albinos are uber-white.
Compared to most groups, I think albinos would make acceptable refugees.
First, I doubt it's a condition which can be easily faked. You can't pretend to be albino they way you can pretend to have been persecuted.
Second, unlike so many other "refugees" (e.g., Somalis, Sri Lankan Tamils, etc.) they've generally done nothing to earn their persecution.
Third, their skin color might serve to help separate them culturally from American blacks.
Fourth, they wouldn't overcrowd our beaches and parks.
The only downside is that they would still want to bring in their (non-albino) extended families, and in other ways they aren't going to be better than any other African refugees.
About 1 in 300 Tanzanians (150,000) are thought to be albino. So throw in albinos elsewhere in Africa, plus all of their family members, and you're talking about a very, very big problem.
So maybe Africans should just learn to, like, get along with people who are different. After all, diversity is strength!
The killings are believed to have been motivated by a lucrative trade in albino body parts, which some Africans believe possess magical powers.
Really, nothing separates these people from northern European whites other than opportunity and a Head Start program.
I find people's uncritical acceptance of The Narrative pretty frustrating and disappointinig. Not just acceptance, but pig-headed refusal to acknowledge what a bad idea it is, even when presented with the evidence. And not just The Narrative, but the following of narratives, period. It's just such a bad way for people ostensibly concerned with fairness and reason to operate.
E.g., racism, discrimination, and oppression of whites doesn't matter because historically it hasn't been a big deal. Wow, great way to set your own descendants up for a progrom; whites must wait until they've been enslaved or herded into cattle cars before they can take measures to ensure they aren't enslaved or herded into cattle cars. That's brilliant.
But that's exactly what libs say when anyone tries to point out the precursors to whites being enslaved or herded into cattle cars.
Just make sure you don't point out that, according to their "logic," it was okay for everyone to ignore blacks being enslaved or Jews being herded into cattle cars at the time these things happened - not just okay, but in fact a moral obligation - because The Narrative wasn't written and the precedent wasn't set yet; that their "logic" gets those awful white ancestors of ours off the hook. That really ticks them off.
You must take into account not only who is discriminated against , but who makes the discrimination;
if such a public bus line had run in 1930's Europe, you bet the NYT would periodically remind us of this insufferable prejudice against women.
But these were not the 30s, it was last week.
It was not in Europe either.
OT, @Steve
Steven Rose at it, again:
School achievement isn't just in your genes,
Anyone who asserts that educational attainment is in large part inherited needs a lesson in modern genetics, says a professor of biology
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24431-school-achievement-isnt-just-in-your-genes.html?full=true
Yeah, Steve, as Matthew said, they are white.
Visited an orphanage in China and saw one albino year-old boy was isolated in a corner of the room away from the other cribs. When I asked a staffer why he was separated, the reply was simply "He's white." I wish we could have brought him home.
Like it says in Guns Germs Steel, it's an accident of geography and biogeography that their society attributes magical powers to albino body parts like that and ours doesn't.
Namely, they didn't have a Charlemagne to forcibly convert them to Catholicism. And before that, no Caesar to imperialistically colonize them and abolish the druids.
What do you expect? Albinos are a disability, not a race or religion.
Actually northern European whites are experts in persecution of people who are viewed as having some sort of disability or deemed unsuitable, or are seen as "outliers". The Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands of people deemed undesirable outliers in WW2, including people for the "crime" of being deaf. Autistic children were among thousands of these victims, experimented on and tortured. The Nordic countries had active eugenics programs for their outliers. Dennmark as late as 1954- tallying up almost 10,000 people. Sweden had an active program, forcibly sterilizing over 2,000 in 1948 alone. The total Swedish tally of women forcibly sterilized on into the 1970s is about 60,000. You could say Northern Europeans got a "head start" in such matters..
"Actually northern European whites are experts in persecution of people who are viewed as having some sort of disability or deemed unsuitable, or are seen as "outliers". The Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands..."
Northern Europeans != Nazis.
In Asia, being born with a vagina instead of a penis is often viewed as a disability worthy of execution. That is why vagina has 125 boys born for every 100 girls
You could say Northern Europeans got a "head start" in such matters..
Didn't the Spartans begin killing off their handicapped children just a bit sooner?
whites must wait until they've been enslaved or herded into cattle cars before they can take measures to ensure they aren't enslaved or herded into cattle cars.
But whites were enslaved. See this excellent book from a prof. from Ohio State. He estimates up to 1 million Euros were enslaved from 1500 to 1800.
In neighboring Kenya there is affirmative action for albinos. As a student I worked in the office of lawyer in Kenya. The boss was unhappy about the appointment of a raft of new appellate justices, thinking they were unqualified and selected primarily based on tribal balancing. He particularly disliked one albino rights advocate who was elevated to a High Court (second instance court) bench. "You know, they appointed someone just because he was an albino!" he fumed.
@ Matthew-
Is 'vagina' a country in Asia?
Come on Steve, you know the reason why the 'Albino atrocities' are not reported as well as we do.
- Just a hint for the naifs - "totem pole of favored caste groups extends to admonishments too".
"Is 'vagina' a country in Asia?
Yes, right next to Outer Fallopia, and not not be confused with Labia, which is is North Africa.
I may have forgotten to edit that one before clicking "Publish." Given how scary some of my edited comments can be...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_people
Re Steve Sailer's link to bias against left-handed people: I am just old enough to have routinely met, in my 1960s childhood, adults who expressed amazement (and alarm) that my congenital left-handedness was not causing schoolteachers to beat the cr*p out of me. These adults seemed to take the line that if I was being allowed at school to write with my left hand (which I was), then I would end up a complete moral degenerate.
Alas for my finances and career prospects, I ended up as no such thing. I must say, the fact that schoolteachers are no longer allowed to pummel left-handed kids into a state of superficial right-handedness does strike me as a notable societal improvement in the English-speaking world over the last 50 years.
This is utterly hilarious. I think you'll get a kick out of it. (You have to read down into the interview part.)
The Nazis were central and south-eastern European.
The BBC did a programme on the persecution of African albinos last year. In retrospect, it's surprising that they did - as this artcle repeats, the core issue is sub-Saharan Africans butchering people of a different skin colour out of primitive superstition. This is not normally a subject the mainstream media would touch with a bargepole.
Re Steve Sailer's link to bias against left-handed people: I am just old enough to have routinely met, in my 1960s childhood, adults who expressed amazement (and alarm) that my congenital left-handedness was not causing schoolteachers to beat the cr*p out of me. These adults seemed to take the line that if I was being allowed at school to write with my left hand (which I was), then I would end up a complete moral degenerate.
Public education = bigotry.
Tanzania is an incredibly dysfunctional country. The rural areas posses almost no infrastructure to speak of, and Dar es Salaam is a nightmare of shantytowns and Soviet apartment blocks.
Also, unlike Kenya, it has no significant Asian or European expatriate community.
See also hunchbacks.
Prejudice against albino's is not at all surprising.
More commonly, try growing up with red hair in the US to get a little flavor of it from your peers. There you are stuck with your pasty white skin that won't tan and your hair that stands out from a mile away marking you off as different from your peers, and numerous media outlets ridiculing you in all manner of perfectly accepted ways that would be considered racist if directed at someone with black skin.
It seems to be the nature of man to pick on those who are uncommon.
"Good for them. A sensible eugenics program is a great idea for a society."
Ummm, wow.
The difficulty is finding a choice somewhere between the immoral act of involuntary sterilization (or worse), on the one hand, and letting them overwhelm society, on the other hand.
"Alas for my finances and career prospects, I ended up as no such thing. I must say, the fact that schoolteachers are no longer allowed to pummel left-handed kids into a state of superficial right-handedness does strike me as a notable societal improvement in the English-speaking world over the last 50 years."
Catholic schools got the word by the time my older brother started school about 1954. Both he & I are lefties and nobody tried to be make us feel bad about it. I always liked being different.
Albino Africans give the lie to the false "race does not exist" meme. Those people are clearly african - what we would often call "black" - except for having white skin.
I lived in Africa for five years. I once asked one of my Ugandan employees what the Ugandan word for an albino was. He told me that in their language albinos are "neithers," that is neither black nor white ("white" covers a lot more skin shades in Africa than it does in the US--several proud African-Americans of my aquaintance were quite miffed when the locals referred to them as white).
As "neithers" albinos fall outside of the normal protections that tribe, clan and family provide their members. Most whites don't really get too worked up either as albino problems just tend to get subsumed into the normal daily violence of so much of African life.
As "neithers" albinos fall outside of the normal protections that tribe, clan and family provide their members
Sort of like neuroatypicals.
One reason that the Nordic countries needed active eugenics programs after 1920 was the cutoff of emigration. Remember, it was the dummies, sluts, slugs, lazies, and crazies who emigrated to America - and succeeded there as farmers, cowboys, craftsmen, tradesmen, labourers.
Consider just what that population looks like, hint it includes a lot of retards and mentally ill people
JOOC, how would you classify someone with both Aspergers syndrome and a 160 IQ?
Forced sterilization is not going to be defeated in debate by bringing up borderline cases. A possible line of attack might be slippery slope or power corrupts. A possible rejoinder might be that all human activities are subject to those dangers.
You can probably push the problem back to the societal conditions that encourage dysgenics and argue for ameliorating those first. Cutting tubes is the last ditch; many unforced errors must have occurred before then.
You could try restricting immigration. Improving diet and health. Inculcating morals in the public mind (i.e., certain things are considered "not done" and are roundly punished when they are done), instead of trying 24/7 to obliterate public morals. Increasing the overall wealth of the society (wealth smooths many problems). Etc.
Taking a meat cleaver to people's privates (so to speak) reeks of flop sweat.
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